Sonic Heroes Remake in UE5 Rumored, So Who Knows If It'll Happen

SEGA originally created Heroes as an entry point to the series for new players when Sonic went third-party. For better or for worse, it then went on significantly influence the series and its fans moving forwards for the next several years (definitely for worse). Now with the success of the movies, Prime and the progressive reintroduction of the extended cast, Heroes could very easily serve that purpose again whilst also banking on nostalgia considering that it's also 20-odd years old at this point. A full-fledged remake or remaster with contemporary visuals sounds like a great idea. I'd much rather see the Adventure games get remade, but Heroes ain't a bad choice. It's a very approachable game.

It would need modernising though because straight-up port of a PS2 game isn't going to excite many people. I wonder how they'll go about this.

 

Yeah, we got like all the major characters playing a role in Heroes. With only the latecomers Silver and Blaze missing, Heroes is a good entry point for new fans.

 

About every Sonic game is an entry point actually

 

Why would they remaster Heroes over [My Favorite Game]?

​

I'm begging SEGA, please keep the multiplayer mode and add actual online. Don't serve me another dog shit party mode like Superstars.

 

I feel like perfect time to remake Adventure 1+2 would've been 2018-2022 but I'm glad it didn't happen. I think the series is in a much better place now than it was back then.

Part of me hopes they choose a cool cel-shaded artstyle for this Heroes remake (assuming it actually exists).

 

I don't agree. After Generations, the 2010s were a pretty rocky place for newcomers. We got the random one-off that was Lost World, a failed classic revival in Sonic 4 that released in two halves either side of Generations, Sonic Fucking Boom and Forces was... Do I have to explain what was wrong with Forces? Even Mania was better for welcoming back old fans than it was for introducing new ones. Then that ball was kinda dropped by not following it up for 6 years until the disappointing Superstars.

Colours Ultimate, Origins, Frontiers and SXSG are pretty good for old and new fans, and a major Heroes re-release would continue that trend better than any other 3D game from before Generations. It's very approachable from a story/lore and gameplay perspective. The plot surrounding Shadow would still be as messy now as it was back then, but otherwise it establishes a bunch of characters very succinctly.

Heroes is pretty solid as something of a branded product, even though as a game its really lacking.

 

I’m pretty sure once colors ultimate was announced a bunch of us assumed this would probably be the next game so I’m not really surprised. Game sold well, got decent enough reception at the time, and is one of like 3 3D “mainline” games that you can’t buy anywhere, it only makes sense. After heroes I’d expect either they just straight port SA1 and 2 to switch/2 as a filler title or maybe touch up unleashed or Lost World.

 

@Blue Blood Would be interested in hearing how you think Frontiers is more newcomer friendly than Mania. Like I love a lot of what Frontiers does, but the character arcs in that game, particularly for Tails and Knuckles, hinge on being familiar with the Adventure games and Forces, not to mention the countless references it makes to older games.

Mania trades a lot on the cultural cache of the classics, but in a “greatest hits” manner like Generations does, and I think is far more approachable for newcomers, in large part due to it being much less wonky (I’m sorry Frontiers I have a soft spot for you but you’re NOT a polished and well structured game).

 

The only reason why I think this might be legit is that it might be a good way of doing the Frontiers open zone gameplay without having to worry about creating hubworlds.

So while there might be enemies you can use your homing attack on, the enemy cages could be used for the Frontiers combat.

 

My biggest problem with Heroes is that every level clearly feels like it was made of a few setpieces that are then copy-pasted and with level design strung between them, to pad the levels out as much as possible. Shadow has this problem but like ten times worse, but it started with Heroes. You never do something once in Heroes. You don't infiltrate a train once in Bullet Station you do that shit like three goddamn times and it's the same thing every time. You flip the castle in Hang Castle three times and then in Mystic Mansion you ride a weird roller coaster thing like three times. The level design in between these copy-pasted setpieces feels like it exists solely to funnel you to the next one and that's it. This definitely matches up with Iizuka's comments about having to practically do all the level design himself when the other designer got sick--it feels like he had to just copy-paste stuff to get something out the door in time.

If they fix that that alone would make Heroes a much better game, but I don't feel like they would go to that length to redesign everything in a remake.

 

Frontiers makes some references that newcomers may not understand, but by and large everything that's important is pretty well contained. It establishes Sonic's relationships with the core cast nicely and tells a story at least Somerset somewhat competently. The open world structure is also forgiving, allowing players to come to grips with how Sonic games play in a stress-free environment. You get quite a breadth of content between the open zones and Cyberspace as well.

My list of problems with Frontiers ain't short and I don't think it's a particularly great game. But if you've never played Sonic before, I think Frontiers might ease you into things better than any of the previous boost games do. It kind of reigns in some of the more confusing aspects of Sonic games, such as the boost itself.

EDIT: Eggman isn't a farmer.

 

We’re now all thinking about how Eggman would sound if he were from the West Country.

 

Bro Heroes multiplayer was the original dog shit party mode. Stunk hard in the shadow of SA2's.

 

For real, I want the final boss of the next game to be the Egg Combine Harvester.

 

Quality =\= point of entry, every one of those can work as a point of entry to someone, i have witnessed it myself in fact, while most of sonic fans were disappointed by Forces, for newer fans/ casuals, they would just perceive it a a fine little game and even an enjoyable one, why? Cause simply they don’t have the point of reference that sonic fans had, which just allows them to have a better experience, i know lot of people who got into sonic through this game and just worked their way through better games in the series.

and Mania is just Generations 2D, if we are willing to accept that Generations is a great entry point than Mania is no different, if anything it does at least have some original levels so it’s not entirely built upon old games and callbacks like Generations, and again i know people who got into the series thanks to Mania.

Now you could argue that a quality of an entry point is that it should represent what the series as a whole is like , but this specific criteria doesn’t work in a series as diverse and as different between individual titles as Sonic, if we, for example, agreed that Heroes is a great entry point, then what other games plays like it? With team formations and 12 characters and changing characters while playing to bypass obstacles? Well the closest you will get is Sonic Dream Team on iOS devices with an Apple Arcade subscription and that’s it

what about Generations then? Loved the boost gameplay there? You have Unleashed and….maybe Forces

Loved Frontiers, want to experience something like it with this degree of freedom and great mobility! Well…at this point of time you are out of luck, cause there is no Frontiers 2 yet

That’s why every Sonic game does in fact work as a point of entry, and they are mostly self contained in narrative when they have one, so you will rarely actually get lost at any of them

 

What's so offensive about having multiple rollercoasters or flipping the gravity multiple times per level? The 2d games do that all the time, it's the norm. Most level gimmicks aren't meant to be one-off. Heroes still had plenty of unique sections, like the giant alligator in Lost Jungle, or the last section of Mystic Mansion.

 

You've completely misunderstood me if you think I'm talking about quality. I didn't mention quality once, and if I implied that then I didn't put my point across very well.

Ultimately, Sonic's not a difficult series to get into. It's not like you can't just pick up any game and start playing. But if you were to put them into some kind of hierarchy of being approachable, I'll always argue that Heroes has a solid framework that makes it very ideal. It doesn't leave you many narrative questions, it establishes a host of characters simply and effectively and the gameplay is very, very easy to understand.

Compare it to something like Forces, which has a lot of the same characters but provides little read on their personalities or motivations, and also has the random inclusion of a second Sonic who's role in the game isn't even very clear. You've got three last stones to contend with too. Lost World and Boom are outliers in terms of gameplay that are very unlike anything else. And Sonic 4 is an episodic release split into teeth very different halves that's supposed to bank on nostalgia.

In Heroes, you literally replay exact same chunks repeatedly in any run of a level. The problem isn't so egregious in Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace, but as early as Grand Metropolis and Power Plant you'll find yourself in rooms virtually identical to the ones you were in just 30 seconds prior. There's an air of monotony about Heroes. There are very few unique platforming mechanics, so you cycle through the same actions over and over.

 

To be fair, Sonic Adventure 2 had the near-identical rooms issue, not only within the same level, but also across several levels using the same locales, textures, etc. (The ark levels are especially problematic here.) You can tell they were on a budget.

 

See me in bob sledding before you throw your stones at me again. Come over, I got an extra Gamecube controller and a corrupt memory card.